


Amanuensis

by sanguinity



Series: sang's moreholmes [16]
Category: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - All Media Types, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - Nicholas Meyer
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, POV Outsider, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-24 08:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: During the long nights of blackout early in World War II, Dr Watson tells stories -- never the same way twice -- to a young shorthand-typist.Or: Dr Watson has always tailored his tales to the audience.Or: Dr Watson was a terrific liar, and I am a little one.





	Amanuensis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rachelindeed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelindeed/gifts).



> Major thanks to Grrlpup and Amindamazed for beta, and to SmallHobbit for Britpick.

> Nevertheless, if the narrative which follows occasionally fails to bear the impress of my usual style, age must partly share the blame, along with the fact that years have elapsed since I last wrote... Another cause for variation is the fact that I am no longer actually writing—arthritis having made the attempt impossible—but rather dictating this memoir to a charming typist (a Miss Dobson) who is taking it down in some sort of coded abbreviation which she will subsequently transcribe to English — or so she promises.
> 
> — _The Seven Percent Solution_

* * *

_The following manuscript was found in Mass Observation's archive, misfiled among the Metrop diaries of 1942._

* * *

I met Dr Watson in September of 1939, during those strange early days of the Twilight War, when volunteers were more plentiful than work and we still carried our gas masks everywhere. Had I met him later there would have been no time for our association, but during those first months, when we had nothing to do but wait…

No, I lie. Dr Watson was a terrific liar, and I am a little one. None of us simply twiddled our thumbs and _waited,_ not at the very beginning. Those first days, everything seemed to go at a breakneck pace. Gas masks needed to be issued, children evacuated, windows taped and covered, shelters dug into gardens. Factories ran full steam, and patients were drummed from their very beds to lay sandbags against the hospital walls, then sent home to languish unattended so their beds would be available for the coming casualties. 

But in among all the frantic hurry of those weeks, there was endless waiting, too. Waiting for billets; for food; for supplies, equipment, and transportation; for identity cards and ration books; for any kind of news; for the bombs to drop and the shooting to start.

I was one of the few volunteers who had procured an official billing: despite my training as a stenographer, I was assigned to work as a nursing aide in the Aylesworth Home in Hampstead, which at least had the virtue of being close to home. The bulk of the professional nursing staff had been sent to the countryside to build hospitals, leaving us volunteers to pick up the work they had left behind. I was entirely untrained as a nurse, and so was assigned to the night shift when most of my charges would be asleep; my primary responsibility would be to help evacuate our residents belowstairs during raids. The night shift was hopelessly understaffed for our task, as was brought home when the sirens sang one dawn only days after the start of the war. Fortunately for us all, however, the bombs never came that morning, nor at all during my tenure at Aylesworth. Our greatest wartime casualty was a resident taking a nasty fall in the dark. Most nights our time ran slow and long until morning.

It was during those long nights that I met Dr Watson. I write, of course, of _the_ Dr Watson, of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

My third night at the home, the staff was sewing even more blackout curtains — the main common areas had been blacked-out already, of course, but there were many long, windowed corridors at Aylesworth, and we couldn't ask our residents to bump along in the dark for want of proper window coverings. Mrs Hutchins, who seemed to have a sixth sense for the doings of the Home, lifted her head from her needle and listened. “That will be Dr Watson, I expect. Peggy, be a love and go see what he needs? Put him back to bed if you can, but he probably just wants company. No, take the curtains with you, he’s probably up for the night.” Then, as I was gathering my things: “Do you like Sherlock Holmes? He’ll tell you a story, if you ask.”

The blue-painted windows in the corridor provided only a scrap of moonlight to see by, and the red bulbs along the corridor's length were no better. A bent figure stumped along in the gloom with a cane, using it alternately for support and as a blind man would to feel his way. I myself could make out the shapes of the furniture, but he evidently could not: he collided with a hall table before I reached him.

I hurried to his side and took his elbow. "Here, allow me," I said, and guided him away from the obstacle. "May I get you something? You really should be in bed."

"No, no," he said, stubbornly turning toward the common room. "I only wanted somewhere with a bit of light. It's exceedingly dull to sit alone in the dark." 

I agreed that would be very dull, and mindful of Mrs Hutchins' instructions, guided him to the sitting room. Unlike the corridor, it was properly blacked out against any leaking light, and so I left him near the door while I hurried ahead to light a lamp.

The light revealed a snowy-haired gentleman, bent with age, wearing a rich paisley dressing-gown and an old-fashioned moustache. He squinted at me in the lamplight. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Miss…?”

“Peggy Dobson, sir. With the Voluntary Service.”

“Miss Dobson. Dr John Watson. If you’ll forgive me, please,” he said, and made his slow, uneven way to an armchair. He put his cane aside, and I took his elbow again to help him sit. He thanked me and re-arranged his dressing gown while I settled nearby with my sewing. “And I can see that I’ve taken you from your work. Please don’t mind me, I’m fine here by myself, I just wanted to sit up for a bit.”

“I can do my work here as easily as anywhere else,” I reassured him, because my remit from Mrs Hutchins had been clear enough. And then, because I had never been able to hold my tongue and Teddy would be thrilled to know, “Is it true? You’re _that_ Dr Watson? I know all the stories.” 

He laughed, pleased. “Now, there’s no need for flattering an old man. I have Mr. Fleming at the cinema for that, the dashing fellow. Or I did, while we still had the cinemas. I suppose that's all done now. Forgive me for saying so, but you seem a bit young for my stories?”

"Not so young as all that," I protested. I was twenty-four, and even though I had been a child when the stories were still being published, I remembered the publication of each new one clearly enough.  "My brother and I used to read them together." 

"Now that's a fine image, brother and sister before the fire, sharing one of my stories! Has he been called up?" 

"He's still waiting his orders." Teddy had up and volunteered, as much to be out of the house and in work as anything, although he claimed it was to have his choice of service. It had been the barest fluke that I had received my assignment first: soldiers were being called up much more quickly than the civil volunteers. I didn’t mention to Dr Watson that I was already sick with worry for him, but he must have known.

“Well, then, perhaps a story for your brother going to war,” he suggested. He closed his eyes and thought. “What’s his favorite story, do you know?” 

“The Giant Rat of Sumatra,” I answered immediately, and then blushed to remember that it was not properly a story at all. But Dr Watson only looked pleased, and asked that I tell him Teddy’s version, as he must have a version of his own to have picked it as his favourite. I told it as well as I knew how, and even acted out the choicest bits, as Teddy and I had once done between ourselves. Teddy's version featured more pirates and swordfighting than a Holmes story strictly ought, but I had never minded that as a child, and Dr Watson didn't seem to mind, either. I had minded much more that Teddy had always made me play the rat, and made me die horribly every time.

“Excellent!” Dr Watson applauded when I finished. “Holmes would have hated every word of it! Oh, no, don’t look like that, my dear. The deeper he scowled, the better the story was. His eyebrows were more accurate for telling me when I was on the right track than my editor ever was. Tell me, did your brother make up stories often? Does he still do?”

Dr Watson kept me talking about my brother right through the night, picking his history from me as expertly as if I had been a client of old: I only realised morning had come when the day staff began taking down the window coverings, revealing bright sunshine outside. I stammered my apologies; he had meant to tell me a story himself, after all.

“Oh, no, no, of course I enjoyed hearing about your brother. Perhaps another night I'll tell you the real story of the rat,” he reassured me, as I gathered my sewing. “Your brother would like that, yes? I’m awake in the night more often than I would like.”

I told him that we would indeed enjoy that, Teddy and I both. He bade me a good morning, and I returned my curtains to Mrs Hutchins, then made my way home in the bright sunlight to sleep as best I could through the anxiety of a city waiting for war.

 

Not a week later, well past midnight, Mrs Hutchins again heard the shuffle and thump of Dr Watson in the hall, and sent me to sit with him again. “Go along, love, and see what he needs. The man probably just wants for some company, and you did nicely enough with him the other night.”

The moon was brighter that night, so Dr Watson had already gained the sitting room by the time I came in. He tried to send me away again, but did not protest when I insisted on staying. He inquired after Teddy, but Teddy had received his orders during the week and had already left, as quick as that. Sunday dinner had been the last that we would all be together for some time, but despite Mum's best efforts to make it gay, it had been a dismal affair, Father more vacant and glassy than ever. Teddy had put a brave face on it, but I could tell that he had been disappointed by Father's poor showing, and I had simmered with repressed rage for Teddy's sake. Teddy had encouraged me to let it go, but I was still out-of-sorts. I daresay I was nursing my anger against Father so I would not have to feel my anxiety for Teddy too keenly.

“Gone already, is he?" Dr Watson said, sounding disappointed. "Well, never mind, it will keep well enough for a letter, I should think. One does set such store by letters.” 

He then proceeded to tell me the outlandish, outrageous story of a giant rat as large and fierce as any bull terrier, running loose in London. There was much skulking about in the dark, the rat by turns stalking Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, and they it, before culminating in a breakneck chase through the streets. When they finally brought it to bay it turned on them, all teeth and claws, and despite their most valiant efforts, the rat escaped into the sewers with its life. Perhaps, Dr Watson suggested with a sly smile, it even lived there still.

It was a thrilling story, and yet it was not much like the stories in the _Strand_ — it smacked rather of Teddy's tales of derring-do. “Was that really how it happened?” I asked, already suspicious.

“Entirely,” he assured me. “You may tell your brother that you had it from John H. Watson’s own lips: the rat survived. He’s probably alive down there still, he and all his enormous ratlings. Hitler will have a nasty surprise waiting for him, if he ever tries to take London.”

I couldn't help but laugh. Of course, I learned soon enough that it had been a pack of lies tailor-made just for Teddy and me, and I suspected as much even then. But all the same, I spent the next morning — exhausted but unable to sleep — setting it all down in a letter for Teddy. I expected it would amuse him, and maybe his fellows, too.

The very next night, Dr Watson again settled himself into his chair and shut his eyes. “I believe I promised you and Teddy a story,” he began. “The Giant Rat of Sumatra.” 

I looked up from my sewing, concerned at the lapse, but he cracked open an eye and grinned at me, then launched into a story completely unlike the first. This one was much more sinister, and featured a hulking informer from the dockland gangs — the fabled giant "rat" — and a political intrigue concerning a ship called the _S.S. Sumatra_. I listened, enrapt.

“So that’s the real version, then,” I said when he had finished.

He only smiled, a sly and private thing. I felt very pleased to be let in on the secret. 

But the next time I sat with Dr Watson he told me yet a third story about the Giant Rat. It bore no resemblance to the first two, although it smacked somewhat of the Red-Headed League or perhaps the Stockbroker's Clerk.

“Now you’re just teasing me,” I accused him.

He sighed and shifted in his chair. He had been restless all through that night’s story, fidgeting and stretching his limbs as he talked. “Indulge an old man his whims. Discretion forbids me to tell some of Holmes’ cases, even now. If I choose to recast them as a fanciful tale about a giant rat, then what harm is done? Besides, if I tell it the same way every time, then I’m as bad as any other bore here with his old, irrelevant war stories. As if the last war will have any bearing on this one, beyond its utter failure to stop it.” I hastened to reassure him that he wasn't boring or irrelevant, but he waved me off. “I’m irritable and bad company tonight. Perhaps you had better return to whatever I dragged you from. You’ve more important things to do than humour an old man.” 

He was firm in his dismissal and would not be turned from it, so after seeing him settled with a book, I reluctantly returned to the nurse's ready room. Mrs Hutchins made me a place. “Don’t take it personal, Peggy. He was a man used to doing things, and now he can’t, and with a war on too, God help us all. Even the sweetest of them get like that sometimes, you’ll see.”

 

Over the time that I knew Dr Watson, he told me six versions of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, and he assured me that every one of them was true. Two were tales of international intrigue and highly-placed ministers, the kind of thing he certainly shouldn’t have been telling me if he had left any of the names intact. Two were lowly tales of venial people and squalid greed, and I couldn’t begin to imagine who he thought deserved protecting in them. Sometimes the Giant Rat was central, as it had been the first night, but more often it was little more than a glancing detail. Except for the first one, I didn’t write any of them down: it was clear enough that Dr Watson didn’t want them spread about. I didn’t recognise the details of the stories, but that didn’t mean no one would.

Dr Watson might have continued telling me about the Great Rat from one end of the war to the other, or at least for the rest of my tenure at Aylesworth, but in late September, while I was passing through the sitting room during the busy evening hours — we began the night shift early, in deference to the difficulties of travel due to the blackout — I passed him at a writing desk and saw him throw down his pen with a curse. It seemed an uncharacteristic fit of temper.

“Dr Watson, is everything all right?” I asked. 

He held both hands in his lap, not quite out of sight below the lip of the table, his left hand rubbing the knuckles of his right. “I’m fine, Miss Dobson, thank you.”

He had been writing a letter, by the looks of it, or trying to; he hadn’t got more than a few lines past his salutation, and each word was more illegible than the last. The letter would have been unsendable in any case, but the page was quite ruined now with a splotch of ink from his show of temper. 

“I can write your letter for you, if you’d like,” I offered.

He flushed. “I couldn’t possibly impose.”

“It’s no imposition. I was a shorthand typist before the war, at least when there was work. I should keep in practice if I'm to go back to it after.” 

“I’m sure you have other duties.”

I smiled, because I was sure he hadn’t the least idea what my duties actually were, beyond listening to him in the midnight hours as he told his stories. I took up his pen and paper and, flipping the sheet to the clean side, drew up a chair near him. “Come now. None of the great men write their own letters anymore.”

“Miss Dobson,” he said with affronted dignity, “I have been married twice and lived for nearly two decades with the most difficult man who ever stalked the streets of London. I know what being managed looks like.”

“Then do me a kindness and allow yourself to be managed,” I scolded. “As you say, there's a war on." Then, more gently: "There’s a typewriter in the front office. You can dictate your letter now, type it up later tonight when everyone is asleep, and it’ll be waiting for you in the morning.” When he hesitated, I added, “I had thought we were friends, of a sort?”

He sighed and gave in. “Thank you. I wouldn’t ask, but it isn't for my own comfort.” 

I nodded and made a few experimental marks on the page to make sure the ink was flowing. The nib was stiffer than I liked for the work, and the unruled letter paper would mean more fuss while typing it up later, but they would do in the pinch. 

“Goodness knows," Dr Watson said, half to himself, "she must have enough luminaries paying their respects; it hardly matters whether there’s one more note from me. But I owed her father a great debt, and herself, too. We had some opportunity to repay our debt to her, but to her father...” 

He trailed off, staring into space.

“Dr Watson?” I prompted, my pen still at the ready.

He looked at me and sighed. “Of course. _Dear Miss Freud,"_ he began, _"It is with a heavy heart that I read the news of your father's passing…"_

I duly took down his letter, paying more attention to the rhythm and shapes of the words under my pen than to their meaning. Even so, the word _morphine_ snagged my attention and nib, threatening to derail the exercise altogether. I gathered my scattered thoughts and reapplied myself to the task. 

It was a lengthy letter, full of remembrances of the departed, and when Dr Watson finished, I satisfied myself as to the spelling of the recipient's name, as well as the address it should be sent to — it was not far from the Home — and then tidied everything away with a promise that I would have it typed and ready for Dr Watson's signature in the morning. He pressed my hand in thanks, and I hurried to join the other girls in putting up the blackout curtains.

It was only much later that night, while I sat alone in the dark office turning my neat Pitman into typewritten English by the narrow red beam of a tightly-shaded lamp, that I had time to peruse the letter's contents properly. The document was far more than a simple expression of regret and sympathy on a man's passing. Dr Watson credited the very life and later career of Sherlock Holmes to the services of Dr Freud — and it was here that the word _morphine_ appeared — for Dr Freud had once cured Dr Watson's friend of a mortal addiction to that horrid substance. 

I confess that Sherlock Holmes had always seemed more like a character out of a storybook to me than a real living man, and Dr Watson's ever-changing tales of giant rats had done little to dispel that feeling. But this sober letter was altogether different from our midnight stories: this was no fantastic tale spun of whimsy and half-truths to while away a long, dark night, but a frank and earnest missive intended to comfort a bereaved daughter. It rang of truth the way his midnight stories did not. And among its lines, almost incidental to its main subject, was an intimate sketch of a man who was surprisingly and painfully familiar to me.

"Peggy!" Mrs Hutchins called, startling me from my reverie. I gathered up my papers and dowsed the lamp.

"Dr Watson is wandering again," she said, when I joined her. "If you'd be a love? I have my hands full already."

And so off I went to find the man himself, his letter in my hand and my mind swimming with the portrait he had drawn of his friend.

"Oh, Miss Dobson, please, I've taken up enough of your time tonight, don't mind me," Dr Watson inevitably protested when I came in to the common room. Then a moment later, when I presented him with his letter: "Why, is this it already? So quick and clever you are!"

He read it through while I fetched a writing surface and tools so that he might sign it. "Why, if she must have a machine-written note — and please, I cast no aspersions on your vocation, a machine is all very fine for business — then this is as nicely done as I could ask." He affixed his name to the final page with deliberate care. "Thank you, Miss Dobson, this was a kindness, truly."

"But is it true?" I asked. Blurted, really — Teddy would go on about my inability to keep a thought in my head when it could come out of my mouth.

He looked up at me. "Is what true?"

"What you said about Mr Holmes. And the… the morphine."

He grimaced. "And cocaine, too. The man could never stand having an emotion, and would have relief in a needle if he couldn't have it with his violin. And then morphine to follow, when the cocaine didn't suit… Why, Miss Dobson, are you quite all right?"

"It's only… Teddy and I used to row about it, you see."

Dr Watson seemed confused, as I imagine he should have been. "Row about what? About Holmes's cocaine?"

"And his morphine. It used to comfort Teddy that Mr Holmes was addicted to morphine, but it didn't seem too likely to me, not a great man like that. And even if he were…"

"And even if he were?" Dr Watson prompted.

"Well, he kicked it, didn't he?" I muttered. 

I daresay I wasn't making any sense at all, but Dr Watson only looked at me for a long moment. Then he reached out and took my hand, drawing me toward the chair beside him. "Come, Miss Dobson, sit. Sit here next to me and tell me all about it." His manner was so kindly that it burned in my chest. "Come now, unburden yourself. Who is it you know who takes morphine?"

I told him the whole sorry mess of it, and with no more persuasion than that: Father preoccupied, trembling and yellow, quickly running out of what the doctor had prescribed and stirring himself only to procure more. It had been almost like not having a father, except for how his melancholy and shattered nerves pressed over the house, Mum tiptoeing around him as she worked herself to the bone. I told him too of the bitter rows Teddy and I had over Sherlock Holmes' supposed morphine use, and whether it suggested our father might yet have a great man like Holmes hidden inside him (Teddy's position) or whether Holmes' ability to throw off the drug was yet one more sign of our father's failings (my own).

Dr Watson was very grave when I finished. He squeezed my hand. "I'm very sorry to hear it, Miss Dobson, and thank you for telling me. It's a hard thing, to watch the drug consume someone you love. And it must be very hard to be a child, to be unable to do anything about it."

I shook my head. It had been a long, long time since I had made any effort like that at all.

"Not that I was ever very effective at it myself," he continued. "The new treatment of giving people just enough of the drug to let them function, it's meant to be a kindness. When you compare it to the treatments of my day, which could kill a man, or make him actively seek death… Well. For most cases, it _is_ a kindness, and it serves the need well enough. But if a man is resourceful enough, determined enough… Your father may have had more in common with Holmes than you imagine. Very little would prevent Holmes from getting more of the drug, when the fit was upon him. I don't imagine the new treatment would have worked very well for him. Nor did Acts of Parliament make much difference, Holmes being who he was."

"But you wrote that he gave it up!" It had been only one small paragraph at the beginning of The Missing Three-Quarter, a few lines that spoke of Mr Holmes weaning himself off the drug, and yet I knew them by heart, having spent far too many hours staring at them. In the end I hadn't been able to bear them anymore, and had violently scratched them out from the family volume. Teddy's rage had been terrible when he discovered my defacement — not so much on behalf of the book itself, but of a passage he had set such store by himself. If we were not already too old for games about the Giant Rat by then, that row put paid to them.

Dr Watson hesitated. "And so I did. The effort nearly killed him. It's not an easy thing to stand by and watch, not for a stranger, and less so for anyone who loved him."

I rather thought I could have borne watching it, if it had been my own father. I had borne much else, after all. 

"And I'm sorry indeed," he continued, "that my words ever caused you any pain. That was the last thing I ever wanted for them." 

I shook my head, suddenly ashamed of causing such a fuss. "It's silly to have set such store by a story."

"Not at all. Stories are a comfort in the hard times. If they're done well, that is." He sighed, and it seemed as if many old sorrows had settled onto him. He squeezed my hand. "Will you be all right, my dear?"

I looked up. "Are you going back to bed?"

"I feel very tired, all of a sudden. Perhaps I shall try sleeping again. If you'll help me up?"

I gave him a hand up from his chair, but he insisted that he didn't need help getting back to his room, now that the corridor windows were thoroughly blacked out and we were able to burn a proper light. 

"Your letter?" I asked, when he was on the verge of leaving without it. "Shall I post it for you?"

"Yes, of course. Please. And thank you so much for it, my dear. I hadn't expected… Well. And you're sure you'll be all right?"

"Perfectly. I shall just be with the other girls. I might even turn my heel tonight." For even that early in the _Sitzkrieg,_ what was there to do but to knit and talk and worry? 

He smiled and bade me a good night, and made his slow way down the corridor.

In truth I was not as all right as I made out, but I muddled through anyhow. Later that morning, when I was at home again, sleepily picking over my breakfast and looking for war news in the paper, I saw the notice of Dr Freud's passing. There was no mention of his association with Sherlock Holmes, but the article told of Dr Freud's work, and his recent escape from Hitler and subsequent flight to England. He was survived by many children and grandchildren, including the recipient of Dr Watson's letter, Anna Freud, aged 43. 

I still have that article, having kept it as a memento of my nights with Dr Watson and proof of the famous circles he had once moved in. The rest of the page I burned to forestall questions about the great hole I cut in it — although as it turned out, my father was in no position that day to notice its absence at all.

 

That evening I was at the Home again, once more arriving early so as not to risk the streets during blackout. The wardens had begun permitting torches by that point, if one wasn't too cavalier with them, but batteries were already so dear that a single torch would be followed by a long crocodile of strangers making their way down the pavement together. Perhaps if there had been other things to do in an evening — the cinema, a dancehall, or simply window shopping — I might have braved the blackout for the occasional evening out, but given the necessity of staying in, the Aylesworth Home was well-lit and busy with people, which recommended it over my own home.

"Ah, Peggy," Mrs Hutchins said when I arrived. "Dr Watson has been asking for you. Perhaps you could look in on him when you have a moment?"

I helped with the blackout first — so many windows at Aylesworth! — so it was some while before I could seek out Dr Watson, but when I did, he greeted me with a eager smile. "Ah, Miss Dobson! Good evening! No one seemed quite sure if you would be in tonight or not. Do you have a moment to talk? Somewhere with privacy, perhaps?"

There were very few places that were private at that hour, but it was a warm evening and twilight still clung to the sky between the buildings, and so we went out into the garden while there was a little light to see. The fresh air was a blessed relief from the close rooms of the building, which were already beginning to overheat from the lack of ventilation.

"I would apologise for taking you from your work, Miss Dobson, but I'm about to propose a scheme that would compound the offense. If you were willing, that is."

"A scheme?" I asked, already intrigued.

"I fear that I have done you and your brother a disservice. You, and Holmes as well — he would have been dismayed to be a reason that children lost faith in their fathers."

I grimaced, and smoothed my skirt over my knee. "I can't rightly remember a time that I had faith in Father."

He reached out and patted my hand. "Even so. Holmes never tested himself against the rigors of fatherhood. Nor did I, for that matter. Perhaps, for the sake of a child, he could have stirred himself to greater effort than he ever managed for his own self. Then again, perhaps not. But to say that your father should have won over from the drug as easily as Holmes... Holmes sincerely believed the drug to be his master. Watching from the sidelines as I did, it was difficult to call him wrong."

It was such a different portrait than those few lines in the Missing Three-Quarter. "Then how did he ever win free of it?"

"That, my dear, is the story I propose to write. A proper story, for _The Strand,_ if they'll still have me. If my stories haven't outlived their time. I would have thought them long out-of-date, but your interest in the giant rat these past weeks… Perhaps there is life in them yet."

"And you need a shorthand typist? I would be honored to help."

He smiled, the expression visible through the deepening gloom only by the ghostly lift of his moustache. "I had hoped you might. It is well beyond my ability to do for myself, I'm sad to say. But it will not be too much for you? I fear that some of the subject matter might be painful."

I later came to believe that Dr Watson withheld from his manuscript the full extent of his friend's trials with the drug — perhaps out of consideration for my feelings, or perhaps only to protect his friend's reputation, knowing what little charity I held for my father during similar struggles. But even with the examples of the giant rat behind me, I never considered the possibility that Dr Watson would choose to alter this story too for my ears. Perhaps if I had realised at the time how attentively he was watching me, or how responsive he was to his audience, I would have given him my first, impulsive response, instead of considering the question quite so visibly. The answer would have been the same in either case.

"I think so long as you do not ask me to forgive Father, I shall be all right," I said, after some length. The pleasure of a new Sherlock Holmes story — and one that I had helped bring into the world, at that! — seemed to vastly outweigh the distress of listening to another man's triumph over his addiction. 

"Of course not, my dear. As much as I hope for a reconciliation — for your sake only — Holmes was an altogether different case. He had none to be grieved by his actions but his brother and me, and we were both our own men. If you will compare your father to Holmes, I want that you should not have a false notion of what the comparison should be. Which I fear I might have given you, however inadvertently."

That seemed fair enough, and so we struck the deal: he would write a new story, and I would be his pen.

It was growing quite too dark to see, and so I gave him my arm as we felt our way back to the door. Before we parted, he asked who I was responsible to in my duties about the Home.

"Why, Mrs Hutchins, of course," I replied.

"Then I shall apply to her to commandeer your time. I won't have you reprimanded on my account."

He must have done so, for not much later in the evening, Mrs Hutchins took me aside. 

"You've been that good for Dr Watson, but if you'd rather not spend the next who-knows-how-long taking down this book for him, I can find other things for you to do, and it never need have come from you."

"It's no trouble. It's better than worrying about the war. And my typing is better than my knitting."

She shook her head. "Well, then. I can't say as the world needs another Sherlock Holmes story right now. But then, I can't say _what_ the world needs, neither, but Hitler back in Germany and butter in the shops, and we don't look to be getting either of those." I thought that she might not give the project her blessing, but she took her keys from her belt and handed them to me. "It's something to do, anyway, and there's a little enough of that at his age. There should be a notepad in the office; you can start with that."

I found a shorthand pad there easily enough, and tore out the leading pages of scrawled notes until I got down to clean sheets. I liberated a few pencils, too, and took pleasure in sharpening them just as I wanted them, relishing the anticipation of having real work to do at last. It might not be proper war work, but at least it was proper _work_.

"Oh, go on," Mrs Hutchins said, when I returned her keys. "I doubt Dr Watson has even considered staying in bed tonight."

I found Dr Watson in his usual place in the sitting room, settled deep in his wingback chair, dressed for bed. He appeared to be dozing, but he opened his eyes when I shut the door, and I saw that he hadn't been dozing at all. "Miss Dobson," he greeted me. And then, when he saw my shorthand pad, "Mrs Hutchins has given her blessing? Excellent. I've just been sitting here thinking of how to begin."

"You usually begin with the client," I reminded him, settling myself in a chair beside him. "Although… does this story _have_ a client?"

He looked at me blankly a moment, then laughed. "I suppose Holmes himself was the client, if you were to put it like that. Which makes it a backwards sort of tale, does it not?" He chuckled again. "Yes, that should do nicely. But I think an introduction first — it's been so long since I put a story before the public." He tilted his head back and considered. While he did so, I made sure of my light and the steadiness of my pad on my knee.

"Are you ready, Miss Dobson?" he asked presently.

"As you are," I said, satisfied with my arrangements. I saw him smile, his eyes still shut. He cocked his hand, as if holding a pen. 

Then he began, and I wrote.


End file.
